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"How long has it been?" Asked the Japanese-accented voice on the other end of the phone that Phyllis held to her ear. "Three years, wasn't it?"

"Four, actually," the brown beaver replied, lounging against the brick wall behind her. "Though, this isn't really my hometown; I'm from Vancouver, originally. Still, it's good to be back here in Canada again." She stared out at the skyline that stretched before her, from the big city lights of downtown Toronto, all the way to the city's signature landmark, the CN tower.

"Biggest city in all of Canada, and the whole place has gone to hell in a handbasket. All because of one unregistered super," she said, and then added hastily. "No offense, love."

"None taken. I still can hardly believe one person could have caused such distress,"_said Jaden. "_An entire city, consumed by a massive crime wave? All because the Triad are gone?"

"It's like the ocean, hun. Calm one minute, nothing amiss. Then, something big falls into it, forces the water apart and creates a space, and then the water all comes crashing right back in to fill that space all over again, and smashes anything caught between," explained Phyllis. "This guy took down the Hong Kong Triad - I don't know_how_he pulled that off, and honestly I don't feel like he should be punished for it. Still, the city's in chaos now because of it and we got to step in."

"And what of the vigilante - the Ghost, wasn't it? What happens to him?"

Phyllis sighed. "Unfortunately, we all have orders to bring him in. Though, God knows how anyone could. The guy's a teleporter, according to intel. He already got away from Ironsides and the 'chief' a few nights ago."

"Do you have a plan to catch him if you find him?"

"I'll think of something," she assured her husband, smiling into the phone. "You just keep the peace down there until I get back, alright?"

"Of course. As long as you promise to be careful."

"Aren't I always careful?" She asked, wearing a confident smirk.

"Do you really want me to answer that?"

Her smirk vanished. "It was a rhetorical question."

"Just promise me, if only for my own sake that you won't put yourself in too much danger."

"I won't," she promised, droning out the second word in exasperation. "I'll be home before you know it, Jay. You just keep that bed warm for me until I get there."

She heard her husband chuckle before he answered. "_That I can do. Call me again soon when you have time,"_he said.

"Will do," she said, both exchanging a goodbye before she hung up the phone. With that, she removed her Bantam pole from its place against her shoulder, using it to lift herself up and taking a moment to stretch her muscles before she laid the pole across her shoulder again and stared out at the city.

"Alright, Toronto," she said. "Here comes Bantam Beaver."

~~~~~

Five days...

It had not even been a week since Warp had learned that the recent escalations in crime within Toronto had been the direct result of the Triad's defeat. Assets across the city that they had controlled for years, brought down in a short span of time by the arrest of a single man. A man who had foolishly centralized all of the power he had in the city, ensuring that he was at the head of all of the Triad's operations, ensuring their fall with his capture.

The absence of Yin Tsen had created a power vacuum. A gap in the criminal underworld that the others who clung to the darkness were desperate to fill. A void... that _he_had caused. The Toronto city war was his fault. He had brought down the Triad, and at the time he had thought that would have brought crime in Toronto to a record low. Instead, the exact opposite occurrence happened. Instead of going down, it had sky-rocketed, to the worst crime wave the city had seen in decades.

"My god, how have I been so naive?" The white-clad hero asked himself, not for the first time since his meeting with Mighty Moose. When the Canadian Director of the Bureau of Superheroes had found him, she had opened his eyes to the truth. Yin Tsen's defeat, and by contrast the Triad's collapse, had brought the criminal underworld of Toronto into the light in a big way. Everything from the smallest gang to the massive crime families of the Mafia were now trying to seize what the Triad had left behind.

Worst still, someone elsey warned him that this would happen, and it had exactly as they said. Blind by his naivete, Warp had chosen not to heed the warning. The assassin, Carlos Chang - Chu-ko-nu, as he was known by his clients, knew what would happen. He knew that Tsen's fall would create the power vacuum that would throw the city into disarray. Now it was Warp who looked the fool, for ignoring him.

When she had first approached him, Mighty Moose had offered Warp a place in the Bureau of Superheroes. If nothing else, this was a chance to become a government-sanctioned hero, registered and able to take action without fear of reprisal from the law. At that time, he had turned her away, thinking that he could do more to protect Toronto by fighting by own rules as he always had. Another action driven by his naivete? By pride, perhaps? After so many battles since that night, he no longer knew.

The battle next seemed to end. He'd lost count how many muggings, street fights, drug deals and hostile takeovers occured where he'd stepped in. Outnumbered, often faced by deadly weapons, Warp had fought to the best of his abilities. So far, he'd managed to put a stop to the violence, though not without collateral. Or, personal risk.

As he sat in his hidden Bunker, Warp pulled tight the gauze wrapping that secured the bandage to his leg. The night before, while stepping in on a turf battle, he'd taken a hit. He hadn't expected a gun - the thugs were fighting using knives and improvised weapons. But after his intervention, one pulled a gun on him and fired. By the time he saw the gun the bullet was already in his leg.

Fortunately, his body armour had taken away enough of the bullet's momentum that it had not pierced too deeply. Most of the damage was little more than a massive, purple bruise that was barely visible through his fur and would be hidden beneath his clothes. But it left him with a limp he could not easily hide from his co-workers, the usual excuse of having slept on it awkwardly would have been feeble. Especially if he were to overexert it and cause it to start bleeding again.

For that reason, he took the day off from work to let his leg heal as much as he could allow it. But his night would go as usual. Daniel Tonraq could take the day off, but the night needed the Warp. There was no rest for him. He made sure to keep a few extra field supplies in the compartments on his belt as he finished dressing his leg and pulled his suit on.

Then, as he contemplated where to begin his patrol that night, his phone beeped. He reached for it on his desk, and saw the icon for a voicemail shaking before his eyes. The photo above it showed his boss, James Clarke. He unlocked the phone and played the message, putting it on speaker.

"Hey, Daniel.Listen, I hope I didn't wake you with this call. Just letting you know that we've decided to close the office for a few days, so you don't need to come in on Monday. Board's decided things are getting a little too dangerous out there, so until the crime wave has died down, we're encouraging all staff members to take some time off, maybe work from their home offices if they can.

"I'm sure this'll all blow over soon, but, if you're feeling up to it, we can set you up with a linked account from your home PC to the office so you can work from home. Hope you're feeling better and uh... stay safe out there. Goodnight."

Warp lowered the phone, staring at it in contemplation. His firm, McKenzie Accounting, was a dirty business. On the outside it was any other accounting firm, but behind the scenes, they were the common central point for the money trails left by the criminal organizations in Toronto. McKenzie was considered neutral ground, untouchable and exempt from protection fees in exchange for absolute discretion and reprisal from the lesser game doting the streets.

By all accounts, McKenzie should've been safe from the gang war, too. The lesser gangs would never touch the place. Even if they had planned a hostile takeover and involved dozens of the street crews, the Mafia or Yakuza would find out and crush them underfoot. They had snitches in their pockets all over the city. If his boss was closing the office, it was because he was expecting a shift in power soon... But why, and how could he know for sure?

"I think it's time I put in a little overtime at the office," he thought aloud.

Having worked at McKenzie accounting for years, Daniel Tonraq knew the building inside and out. Even Clarke's office, despite being typically off-limits to most of the staff unless they were invited in, wasn't all that hard to get into - everyone knew the code to the mechanical lock on the door.

Of course, it didn't change the fact only a staff member would know the code to access the office, and the door was monitored by a CCTV camera in the hall. If the Warp was seen entering the office, Daniel would be an all too obvious suspect - even though seven other Cervidae worked at the office, half of them were deer - all female without antlers. The rest were caribou like himself, two males and one female and Daniel was the tallest and stockiest of them. Anyone could connect two dots placed before them so clearly.

So he waited, well into the evening. He watched and counted the heads of everyone who left the firm. Forty-eight accountants, three receptionists, Mr Clarke himself, his intern, Blake - one of the aforementioned caribou, a skinny fellow in his early twenties - and the assistant manager, Connie. Only two others remained on site for the next hour, when the second last - the janitor, left. Warp made his move as he watched the night watchman unlocking the door for the janitor, allowing him to head home for the night. He pictured Clarke's office in his mind and triggered the teleportation. A brief moment of weightlessness later and he was in the familiar office of his employer.

Clarke's office was fairly large, built to accommodate both his desk and his assistant's, but Clarke's L-shaped workstation took up the majority of the space. Across its surface lay a typical office computer currently powered down, a Newton's Cradle, all nestled between two plastic plants. Blake's desk, a typical aluminium work desk found in any cubicle office, sat closest to the door, with only a closed laptop resting atop it.

Warp quickly turned to the window over Blake's desk, hiding most of his body behind the wall as he peeked out into the main lobby. He couldn't see the watchman at the front door, which meant he was probably coming back upstairs to the offices. A few seconds later, he saw the portly but beefy-armed beaver male coming up the steps and ducking into the smaller office at the end, two doors away, where he'd surely be spending most of the evening with his eyes glued to his portable DVD player.

Making sure the blinds were closed in case the guard came back out, Warp moved over to Clarke's desk. He wrinkled his nose at the thick scent permeating the room, smelling of oranges. 'Ugh! What is with all the air freshener, boss?'_He thought to himself. '_There's enough scent to hide a corpse in here.'

He shuddered at the implication, hoping that was not what he was going to actually find as he walked over to Clarke's desk, tapping the power button and letting it boot up. Of course, the computer was password protected, and Warp rolled his eyes for having not thought of that sooner as he began to think of what his boss might use for a password. Curiously, he moved the cursor over to the hint, and to his delight, there was something written there.

'_Favourite... position?'_He thought to himself, arching a brow. '_He can't simply just be referring to a job position, but what else could he be referring to?'_He tapped his finger as he considered the options, looking around the desk for any sign of anything else that might offer a hint.

His head snapped up as he heard what at first he thought was shouting from the hall, instinctively dropping to one knee and expecting to see the night watchman burst through the door, baton in hand. Fortunately, as he listened, he heard the sound again, and realized that it wasn't shouting... it was laughter. Warp let out a relieved sigh, and then stopped...

There was another smell under the desk... a distinctively fruity smell, and when he stuck his head under to look underneath the desk, he didn't see any immediate cause. But something else caught his eye. Something was taped against the underside of the desk; taking a chance, Warp drew his mini flashlight and shone a light at the object, only to gawk as he realized what it was. It was a box of fruit flavoured condoms, and a pack of a green, moss-like substance he knew all too well taped just beside it. Below the objects, a can of orange-scented air freshener.

He also noticed scrapes against the underside of the desk; pale gouges in the wood made by something hard rubbing against it. He felt them, noting some looked more recent than others, and a few were even overlapping. Then, on a whim, he reached up and touched his antlers, remembering that Clarke's intern was, like him... a caribou.

"Oh, Blake," he whispered, shaking his head. "You wouldn't..."

Was Clarke forcing Blake to service him while on shift? Or was Blake doing this of his own choosing to earn favour from Clarke? Either way, a young man was being taken advantage of for his bosses' own pleasure. Daniel had never known Clarke to be an upstanding citizen, knowing what he knew about McKenzie, but he dared hope his boss had_some_decency. He'd always treated his employees well, rarely questioning when they needed time off, always ensuring they were paid well. There was a comfortable, welcoming work environment with James in charge. Sure, it was a pretty carpet rolled over a truly filthy floor, for the clientele that McKenzie kept, but all in all it was not a bad place to work.

As much as Warp would have loved to expose his boss then and there, there wasn't much he could do from where he stood now. Swallowing his growing queasiness, Warp turned his attention back to the computer screen and hesitantly looked at the password hint again, suspecting he now knew exactly what it was. With trembling fingers, he typed it in. The first time was wrong, typing as two words. Putting them together as a single word and lowercase, he was both relieved and further disgusted when he found it was correct, and the computer opened to the desktop.

Fortunately, Warp didn't have to guess any more passwords. Since the office operated on a private network from a provider with excellent cyber security, Clarke was confident enough to save his passwords to his own email - his personal email, not the management email, which the owner, the assistant manager and probably Blake could likely also access. That would make his outside 'connections' much easier to spot. At first, nothing stood out to him as he scrolled through the messages; typical electronic newsletter and fliers and the invitation to a high school reunion that Warp already remembered Clarke attending a month ago. Moving from the inbox to the archive, he found an email subject that caught his eye.

'Kameyama making a move, it read. Kameyama... the name sent a chill creeping up his spine. He knew that name... Knew and _hated_that name... He wasted no time opening the email, and reading the contents.

"Hey, James,

It's your old pal Johnny.

Look, I know your place is supposed to be neutral ground for business, but the game's starting to change. We just got word that the samurai wannabes under that nut Kameyama are about to hit Dalton sometime tonight. No one's outside the family's supposed to know about Dalton, no one that is except the accountants you got on our payroll. Someone at your business might have talked, and it better not have been you or we're going to have problems. But I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, as a favour.

Find who at your firm squealed, and make damn sure you get that info back to me, and I'll take care of the rest. Better dust off that help wanted sign. One of your employees is probably going swimming in the great lake real soon. For now, we gotta get down to Dalton and make sure those Japs don't gallop off with all our money.

Johnny."

Dalton Bank. A private banking firm, independently owned and operated, but considered a sister branch to one of the larger banks in the city. Warp had often suspected the place had ties to the mob but he could never be sure which family it was. Even now, he still didn't - this 'Johnny' character hadn't left much for him to go on. But that mattered little right now. Dalton Bank was in the area of downtown Toronto, located near city hall, and - if he remembered the address correctly, on Chestnut Street, it was located right next to a hotel, the Textile Museum, a high rise, and the Chinese Visa Application centre. All areas that even well into the evening were going to be very busy. Dalton Bank stayed open late for its clients as well. When the Yakuza hit, as this email suggested, there would still be innocent people inside and in the surrounding area where they might be caught in the line of fire.

Without a second thought, Warp closed the email, shut down the PC, and put the chair back exactly as he had found it. Then, in a flash of light, he was gone, praying he wasn't too late...

~~~~~

The tellers at the counter knew immediately something was wrong when six men entered through the doors of the bank, so close to closing time. All six of them were of Asian ethnicity, they could see, and all of them walked with purpose, their eyes taking in their surroundings studiously. Their inquisitive gazes lingered briefly on the security guards who stood strategically placed throughout the interior.

It still came as a shock when the guns appeared in their hands. One of the guards had already lifted his radio to his mouth to report the six beforehand - probably what had prompted them to draw their weapons. One of the tellers hurriedly tapped a button behind the counter and then she and her coworkers ducked behind the counters as the shutters came down noisily, sealing them off from the Yakuza enforcers. People in the line were few due to the time of day, but there were still clients and other staff members about.

The security guards were dropped quickly. No shots were fired by the Yakuza, opting instead to take the uniformed men down bare handed, while the rest ordered the patrons to line up against the far wall, moving them out of sight of the main entrance and dragging the new unconscious guards with them. Two of the Yakuza ran back outside and returned in short order. One of them carried a round object under his arm that, to any hostages bold enough to look up at it, seemed to be little more than a small charcoal-coloured plate. They didn't get to study for long before the man disappeared around a corner, heading toward the bank's vault, covered by the second thug. The other four were focused on the hostages, one of them attempting to breach the door to the tellers, but it was not giving way to his kicks.

Then, moments later, several cars rolled up out front, speeding into the parking lot before coming to a stop with tires squealing. One of the Yakuza shouted, and the others turned their attention to the door while moving to take cover. They shouted something in Japanese to their two men at the vault, which was followed shortly by the sound of something tall and heavy hitting the floor, akin to a sheet of plywood falling onto concrete.

Men in suits and armed with sub-machine guns ran up to the door. One of the Yakuza fired rounds from the Mac-10 in his hands. The glass door shattered from the hail of bullets, and the men outside dashed to either side of the door to take cover behind the walls. A window to the left of the door shattered as another gangster stepped in front and fired a spray of bullets inside, forcing the Yakuza behind cover while the hostages screamed, watching as bullets hit the laminate floor dangerously close to them.

One of the men at the vault called out to his cohorts, letting them know that they were finished. Almost as if on cue, one of the mobsters outside suddenly went down - not from a gunshot, but a red and white blur that fell upon him from above, followed by the sound of bone hitting bone. The mobsters began shouting incoherently to each other as the white-clad caribou appeared randomly in front of each of them, wrenching their guns from their hands and teleporting away before anybody could stop him. When Warp reappeared again, the guns had vanished from his hands, and now it was him against twelve unarmed mobsters, save for a few who managed to keep their switchblades. One had a pistol - he fell first, receiving a knee between the eyes from the teleporting caribou.

The Yakuza though, only grinned to each other. They ran to the vault door, and appeared again with their two compatriots, each of them carrying duffel bags swelling with money and items they had taken from the vault, and ran for the rear exit of the bank where their driver was waiting. The Mafia had overlooked the back door, clearly thinking they had more time to pin down the Yakuza before they could get into the vault, which hadn't taken them long. Yet, the Japanese syndicate members were not ready for what awaited them when they got outside...

The van was parked exactly where it was supposed to be; they ran over, tried to open the rear doors, but they were locked. One of the enforcers ran up to the cab to shout at the driver, but his mouth fell wide open when he saw the door had been ripped open and the driver lay unconscious across the front seat.

"Konnichiwa," a voice spoke above him, in a plain Canadian English accent.

He snapped his head up to look atop the van's cab, and there she stood, crouched on the roof. A light-brown beaver woman, dressed in red knee high boots, a matching bikini bottom, chest wrap and eye mask draped over her face. A long pole, seemingly made of bamboo, was draped across her shoulder, tapping lightly on the back of her neck as she grinned down at the Yakuza enforcer.

"Ride's canceled, eh," Bantam Beaver said before lashing out with her pole, smacking the enforcer across the face and sending him reeling, barely letting out a grunt before collapsing to the pavement.

Drawn by the sound of their cohort falling to the pavement, the other five enforcers, weapons in hand, came running around to see what had happened. The instant they saw the heroine perched atop what had once been their getaway vehicle, Bantam Beaver burst into motion, jumping into the air and somersaulting to land behind the mob. In the same motion, she brought her pole down upon the head of the nearest of the gangsters, dropping him as easily as she had the first.

One of the men levelled his gun at her, but with a shout from the beaver, her pole very suddenly tripled in length, its base striking him square in the forehead like a narrow extend-a-punch; it wasn't enough to knock him out, but it was still unexpected and sent him toppling onto his back, losing his weapon in the process.

The other three were quicker, hastily bringing up their sub-machine guns. She twisted around seemingly to try to take one of them with her pole, but her target ducked. Her attack was a feint, and she ducked behind her tail, as much as she could fit her body behind it. The men opened fire, and the bullets ricochet off the tail, much to the disbelief of the gangsters, leaving its owner unharmed.

As their guns clicked with emptied magazines, Bantam Beaver was moving again, bringing her pole around and flying into her opponents like a red and brown whirlwind. The first was trying to reload his weapon; he took two rapid strikes - one to the jaw and the other under the chin. The second threw aside his weapon and raised his arm to protect himself, biting back the pain as his arm took the strike from Bantam Beaver's pole, and then snapped forward with a well-placed kick to her chest. Had his target been an ordinary woman, the attack would have knocked the wind out of her or at least thrown her onto her back.

But Bantam Beaver was unmoved, the kick bringing only a grunt from her while her feet remained planted - until she returned the kick with one of her own, delivering a roundhouse across the man's face that sent him spinning off his feet. The third man had successfully reloaded his gun in the seconds she had spent fighting the other two, but like the snap of a whip, she lunged forward, pushing his weapon toward the ground, a burst burying itself harmlessly into the pavement before she cracked her skull against the shooter's face. His nose cracked, and he went cross-eyed as he fell onto his backside, momentarily dazed by the pain while slowly lifting his hands to clutch his nose as it began to bleed.

The one she had struck with her extending pole was scrambling for his weapon, but with a cartwheel and a flip, Bantam Beaver was in front of him, her foot resting on his weapon. He looked defiantly at her, and then pulled a knife as he lunged for her again. She caught his arm halfway, and with a flick of her wrist, spun the assailant onto his back before smashing the butt of her weapon against his head, sending him into blackness.

"Well, that wasn't so hard," she said, resting her pole across her shoulder. "Sorry I had to beat up some of your fellow countrymen, hubby," she added to herself with a roll of her eyes.

Her gaze found the man whose nose she had broken. He was getting up, fighting through the pain to stand up and make one last run at her. She adjusted her pole and thrust it at the charging man, striking him in the nose again, causing such a burst of white-hot agony across his face that he immediately passed out from the pain. She lunged over to him to catch him by his shirt, just barely catching him before he landed on his head, and then let him drop the rest of the way.

She lifted her head, hearing the sound of sirens echoing through the city skylines. The police were closing in, but she still had the other gang out front to deal with before they arrived if she wanted to prevent a firefight from erupting in the middle of the city.

But just as she began to head over the building, she paused. She heard_sirens_, but no other gunshots... had the mob stopped shooting realizing the Yakuza were gone? She hadn't really been able to pay attention during her own fight to know exactly when the shooting had stopped, but if so, that meant they were probably coming through the bank at that very-

The door opened. She whipped around, brandishing the Bantam Pole, and her eyes went wide when she saw the figure who emerged from the bank's rear exit. The Ghost of Toronto stared back at her with featureless gray eyes, equally surprised to see the heroine and the throng of unconscious enforcers lying strewn about behind her.

"Well, this must be my lucky-" Bantam Beaver trailed off as a flash of blue-white light forced her to reflexively blink. In that instant, Warp had vanished.

"...day," she finished with a glib tone, matched by her scowl 'Note to self, next time you're face to face with a teleporting vigilante, nab him before_he warps away.'_

She blinked, and then chuckled. "Oh. So that's why he calls himself that." She thought aloud, and then turned to see the first of the police cruisers arrive, ready to help the police secure the scene.

"What do you mean the door is gone?" Bantam Beaver asked the officer, unable to hide the incredulity in her voice.

"Just what I said, ma'am," replied a very confused police officer as he stepped out of the vault, carefully stepping over the plastic board that had once been the outer layer designed to make the door seamlessly into the wall around it when the door was shut - a door normally made of high grade steel that could withstand a blast from a whole bundle of dynamite.

Yet of that steel door, not a trace remained, nor of the contents it had once protected bar a few scattered bills and the broken safety deposit boxes they had managed to pry open. The items were being sorted and processed as evidence by the police after they had secured the van. The tellers, after being extracted from their workspace turned impromptu panic room, and hostages were being questioned and cared for as needed. Miraculously, no one had been killed during the brief firefight between the Yakuza who had raided the bank and the mobsters outside who according to an arresting officer were the local branch of the Italian Mafia.

Bantam Beaver turned her attention to the vault door again, puzzled. How could an entire steel door simply disappear? Other than the outer layer of plastic, all that seemed to be around the door were mounds of a gray, sand-like substance that forensics would definitely want to take samples of, requiring the officers to be careful not to contaminate the crime scene as they went in and out of the vault.

What else puzzled her, however, was the Yakuza's attack in general... 'Robbing a bank,'_she thought. '_Seems pretty small time for one of the three biggest international crime syndicates in the world.'

"Hey... what's that?" Someone said.

Bantam Beaver snapped out of her train of thought, turning toward the voice. The speaker was a young doe female, one of the tellers by the look of her clothes, who was staring in confusion at the vault door.

"What's left of your vault, apparently," Bantam replied non-chalant.

"No, that," the doe replied, lifting her hand to point at the wall beside the vault. "That black thing on the wall. That's not supposed to be there."

Bantam Beaver and the officer both turned to look where the doe was pointing, toward a black object stuck to the wall which seemed to be magnetized to the steel frame that had once housed the door, which unlike the rest of the door had somehow remained intact while the rest of the door had vanished. The officer approached the object, accompanied by the heroine, both of them studying it closely; the former even pulled out his flashlight to shine it on the object. At first glance, it seemed to be some kind of black plate, but light showed that the outer layer was semi-transparent, revealing a network of electricals beneath the surface.

Something else caught Bantam Beaver's eye as she stated at the disk; a streak of red that was coating the outside of the vault, as though someone had taken a red felt marker drew a red ring around it. "There's something on the frame too," she explained to the officer, pointing it out with her finger but being careful not to touch it even as he shone his light on it.

"Is that paint?" He asked.

"Not sure," answered Bantam Beaver, before turning to the teller. "Were you guys painting your vault door before this raid?"

"Uh... no," she replied, she asked with a shrug. "What'd be the point of that?"

"Curious..." Bantam Beaver remarked, looking at the red marking again, and then turning to the officer. "Any idea what that plate is?"

"Haven't the foggiest, ma'am. Never seen anything like it," he answered, casting a brief glance at the doe as she was led away by another officer; being a buck himself she could guess he was a little curious, but he stayed on task. "Some kind of device to unlock the vault would be my first guess if the door hadn't pulled a Houdini on us." He added with a humorous tone.

Bantam Beaver allowed herself a smile and a snort of laughter at the officer's jest. "Nice one," she complimented, before looking at the device again, fingers tapping her staff as she pondered. "It may still be connected, though. I think it's best if I take that to one of our tech experts. They might be able to get a read on... whatever this thing is."

"Uh..." the officer replied, unsure. "I'd have to ask the captain. If it's not supposed to be there, it could be important evidence."

"I know. Go ahead to make the call, have him contact Mighty Moose if he needs to. She'll vouch for me," she assured the officer. '_At least she better,'_she thought to herself, not without a hint of spite.

"Miss uh... Bantam?"

Once more she turned, this time facing another officer - this time a female. An African Okapi woman, who shifted uneasily as she addressed the superhero. "Yes, officer?" She asked, and the Okapi officer jumped slightly. "Don't be so nervous. We're all on the same side here," she said reassuringly.

"R-Right. I just came to let you know we retrieved the surveillance footage of the fight out front of the bank, a-and we have confirmed the Ghost was indeed the one who stopped the mobsters," she explained. "We apprehended eight of the shooters. Four slipped away in the fighting but not before he disarmed them. We've sent out officers to track them down."

"Eight shooters? He took down that many mobsters by himself?" Bantam Beaver asked, surprised. 'Huh... his eight to my seven. I have competition,' she thought to herself, intrigued.

"I was shocked too," the officer admitted. "It's like he was everywhere. A blink of light, and he was gone, striking down another of them."

Bantam Beaver tapped her fingers against her pole as she considered the implications of what the officer told her. She had heard her share of rumours about The Warp. Supposedly, in addition to being a teleporter, he was also a very talented fighter, easily able to hold his own against multiple opponents - the latter part he had just proven for himself if the Okapi officer were not exaggerating. If she were to face him herself, she could have an early advantage by getting a sense of his fighting style.

"I'd like to see the footage, please," she said.

"Uh, sure," the officer replied.

~~~~~

It hadn't been hard to single out the leader of the Mafia among the gangsters who had arrived on the scene of the bank robbery. Though they had all come in matching cars, one of the men who had stepped out had hung back barking orders to the rest, and on top of that he was the most well-dressed among them, wearing a suit that Warp was sure he wouldn't be able to afford with a whole month's pay.

When he'd found the Yakuza who had planned to rob the bank had been dealt with, he decided to pursue the leader of the defending mob, hoping to use him to gain some information on the associated families. He needed to find out who led the Italian Mob in Toronto. Unlike Yin Tsen's branch of the Triad, they did not centralize all their power to one person, meaning there were likely multiple leaders, and even Warp didn't know who they were. None of them were the clients of Daniel Tonraq. This could be his chance to find out...

But it was all for nothing a flash of white-hot pain lanced up his side and caused him to stumble. He teetered over the edge of the roof he'd been running, open space opening like a maw in front of his eyes. He flapped his arms, trying to regain his balance in vain. He careened over the side of the roof, and plummeted toward the street.

Wasting no time, Warp sighted the roof of the building opposite to him and teleported. He had not fallen far, but he had accumulated enough momentum that upon teleporting, he hit the roof hard. Stars exploded in his eyes and air rushed out from his mouth. For a moment he felt like vomiting, clutching his stomach in pain and coughing hoarsely. He held his resolve and his dinner, and recollected himself.

"Dammit..." he said to himself.

He lifted his exhausted body up on his hands, dragging himself over to the edge of the roof and peering back down to the street hoping to see the car. But it was too late. The car was gone. He cursed himself for his weakness, pushing away from the roof's edge and laying down against the angular metal rooftop, seething. The coolness of the metal seeped through his uniform, helping to calm him as he took a moment to gather his breath, resting until he was able to sit up again and stared out across the skylines beyond.

"Well... at least I was able to get to the bank on time," he said. He could count that as a victory.

No one had been hurt, and the Yakuza might have escaped had that other heroine not been there to stop them. He took a moment to consider the heroine he had run into. He didn't recognize her, but from what few words she had spoken before he'd taken off, her voice had been distinctly Canadian - Western Canadian, to be exact. Was she from Alberta? Or, perhaps British Columbia. If so, what was she doing all the way out here? He scoffed at the silly question. If heroes from across the border were in Toronto to quell the criminal uprising, it stood to reason someone local would be called in as well.

"Perhaps I can risk a little time for a rest," he said, slowly getting to his hooves. His hurt leg seared once again as he put weight on it, and he glared at the limb as if it were solely responsible for making him lose his target. He'd been fighting off the discomfort of his injury for some time, but it seemed the evening's battles had agitated it to the point it was no longer bearable.

Taking in his surroundings to get his bearings, he took a moment to gauge how far he was from his apartment and how many teleportations it would take for him to reach. With a long breath to steady himself, he prepared to teleport... and then stopped. Something had clicked with him as his mind went over the email that had led him to the bank one more time.

The Mafia were looking for a snitch...

They had told Daniel Tonraq's employer, James Clarke, about the attack, to expect that there might be a shift in the accounts. Either the Yakuza losing assets to them or vice versa, he wasn't sure, but he might have been the last person they told. On the same night that they did, both the Warp and another superhero show up at the bank as it's being attacked. Warp had taken down eight of their men, and four had escaped; the police would be searching for them, but it was only a matter of time before they called it off and the Mafia would be back on the streets.

If they thought James was the snitch - and likely would with how everything had happened, they'd hunt him down.

"Damn!" He cursed, turning his gaze westward.

Rest would have to wait. Clarke may have been sleazy, but he was not the Mafia's snitch - he was not bold enough to put himself in such a dangerous position. Even so, the Mafia would gun him down without a second's hesitation if they thought he had given them up to the police or the B.O.S. He had to get to him before they did.

His boss lived in Parkdale, over five kilometers away. Three teleports would get him there. He knew his bosses' address but he didn't know Parkdale very well as it wasn't part of his usual patrol area. Of course he could have used his cell phone's GPS to locate the address, but he always left that at the Bunker when in uniform. Thinking back, he remembered the street name and the house number, and a local map board would show him the rest. Shutting his eyes, he pictured a location within sight of Parkdale, and tried to teleport.

Nothing happened.

'_Too far away,'_he realized.

He shifted his thoughts to another location; his mind focused on the bank where he had encountered the Mafia. He teleported, appearing on the roof of the building across. With that, he started to focus his attention on the location he'd originally pictured; once again, his teleportation didn't work. He was still out of range.

"Okay... what if I-"

As he opened his eyes, he barely caught a glimpse of a shadow cast over his own. Reacting on instinct, he spun around, but that was a mistake. The heroine he had encountered at the bank was now falling toward him, spinning with her unusual staff in hand and swiping it at the caribou. By the time he had turned around, the pole was millimeters from his face. An explosion of white flashed across his vision before everything shifted immediately to blackness. He didn't feel his body slamming onto the roof as he lost consciousness...

~~~~~

It had been a sheer stroke of luck.

After Bantam Beaver had finished her business at the bank, she stepped out onto the street to leave. With her Bantam pole gripped firmly in both hands as she commanded it fly, carrying her into the air as though she were hanging from the rope ladder of a helicopter. To her shock, as she rose above the nearest of the buildings around the bank, she spotted a blue flash across the street and there he was.

For whatever reason, the Warp had returned to the scene of the crime. She had no idea why he had come back, but something told her she had only seconds to seize the opportunity his return had presented. She thrust her pole toward him, and soared across the street in a beeline. At the last second, she pulled up, flying in an arc toward the Warp, who turned around to see her coming but he was far too late. In a single, carefully aimed blow to the head, she sent the white-clad caribou careening onto his side, his cape falling over his unconscious figure.

She spun her pole and rested its base against the rooftop as she looked down at the unregistered super, arching her brow. "Pretty careless of you to come back here so soon," she said, smiling in satisfaction.

Now that she had him though, she had to make sure he couldn't get away again. The instant he woke up, he'd surely teleport away once he had his bearings. He wouldn't be unconscious for long either. She moved to the roof's edge, taking a look at the surrounding area for anything that might help her.

Bantam Beaver didn't fully understand how the Warp's powers worked, or what requirements he had to meet before he could teleport. A hypothesis began to form in her mind as her gaze settled on the construction site that was next door to the bank; it was a fairly barebones location, with a concrete foundation set for the building that would eventually go up. But a smile formed on her face as she saw that it offered exactly what she needed...

When Warp awoke, his head was throbbing. He tried to lift his arm to rub an aching spot, but he couldn't move them. As he began to come to his senses, he learned he was bound. His arms were locked behind his back, the clink of a chain telling him he was handcuffed. He tried to move his legs only for the same sound to echo from his hooves. His vision was black even though his eyes were open, and he felt the tightness of something wrapped over his eyes. He momentarily panicked, fearing they'd taken his mask off, but he found he could still feel it pressing into his face.

'Someone caught me... but how?'

Shaking off his delirium, he recalled what had happened. The heroine he had seen at the bank earlier had jumped him on the roof. How'd she found him so quickly? Then, he cursed himself, realizing his stupidity. He'd teleported back to the same place he had first encountered her. Of course she had not left yet, and in a cruel turn of fate she'd seen him arrive.

"So, you're awake, I take it?" A female voice chimed into his ears. Instinctively, they flicked toward the sound and he lifted his head. He grit his teeth against the momentary throb of pain that followed the motion.

"Who are you?" He demanded.

"Bantam Beaver," the female answered. "I was under orders to capture you, Ghost. Or, should I call you Warp?" He heard the sound of footsteps from heavy-soled shoes or some kind of boots - he hadn't really seen what she'd been wearing during their brief encounter.

"Warp will do," he replied, and then thought of the name she had given him. "Bantam... I've heard of you. You're one of the supers from Vancouver. I'd heard you were transferred to the States."

"Long story," she replied, and he detected a hint of annoyance in her voice. "I'm back in the True North for a little while. Suppose I have you to thank for that."

"Called back because of the city's underworld uprising, right?" Warp asked.

"Bingo," she answered.

"So where are we now?"

Bantam Beaver clicked her tongue, and he had the sense she was waving her finger at him. "Nice try," she said. "I'm willing to bet the only reason you haven't poofed outta here is because you don't know where you are right now."

"A fine hypothesis," Warp complimented her, shifting again as he tried once again to rub his head against something, trying to ease the ache. "I wager I have a rather big bump on my head, judging by this perpetual throb."

"Sorry about that. Knew I'd have to act fast if I wanted to catch you," she said.

"I commend you on efficiency," he said. "But I have to insist you release me."

Bantam Beaver laughed. "Now why would I do that? You're a fugitive."

"A man's life may be in danger," replied Warp. "James Clarke, manager of McKenzie Accounting. He's in contact with the Mafia who control that bank where we met." He let out another groan, trying to rub his head against his shoulder to no avail.

"And you know this, how?" Bantam asked with obvious skepticism.

"I know," he stated evasively. "He received a tip from one of the enforcers about the attack on the bank. That's how I found out the attack was happening, else I might have been too late."

"Let's pretend for a moment that I believe you, except for a gap in your explanation." She replied. "You say the bank's mob controlled, but they already knew the Yakuza was going to hit it. If they told Clarke it was going to happen, why would they go after him?"

"Our presence at the scene," replied Warp. "Two supers show up at the scene of an assault on the assets of one of the major families. Only hours before that, Clarke received the message. The Italian Mafia are paranoid, and rarely take chances where their anonymity is concerned. They may think that Clarke talked about the imminent attack on the bank and prompted a response from two local heroes." He cocked his head toward her. "My presence was not a coincidence. I don't imagine yours was either."

"The police got a call from someone passing by the scene when the gunfire started. I was closeby," she replied. "Like I said, it's been a lucky day. Right place, right time to stop that robbery, _and_to catch you." He heard the tap of something that sounded like hollow wood on the floor - her staff, he guessed. "I'll make a call to have the cops go check on this Clarke guy. They'll take him into protective custody."

"They won't get there faster than I can!" Warp said sharply. "I can be at his house in less than a minute, and every second counts!"

He felt a jab at his chest with the pole. "Simmer down, ghosty," she stated. "I'm not letting you go, now just let me-"

Warp, now thinking he knew where she was, planted his face against the floor. He swung his body, hurling his hips and legs into a two legged kick that he thought was aimed for her legs. His real intent, though, was the blindfold being pulled from his eye, just enough that he could see a spot in the room. He could already hear the whoosh of her pole as his legs hit only air. He teleported, and the handcuffs clattered to the floor.

His limbs were freed, and Warp sprawled in midair. He hadn't known how high he was off the floor until he had reappeared, but managed to bring both hooves under him as he fell. He spun to face Bantam Beaver, ripping the blindfold off. He immediately recognized that they were in a mobile office - the kind used by construction site foremen and managers. The furniture had been moved about the room, leaving an open space where Bantam now stood, brandishing her weapon as she faced him.

He reached for his telescopic staff, but his hand touched only the bare back of his suit. Bantam Beaver had taken his belt. He had no chance to look for it before she was on him, and he brought up his arm to block the swing of her weapon. The pole thunked against the concealed plate, and his arm quivered. Even behind titanium and padding, he felt the hit quite clearly.

He snapped forward, driving his fist into her gut. She grunted from the punch, but barely staggered from the hit. Using the brief seconds he had, he took in his opponent. She was taller than him, wore a red mask similar to his own through which he could see blue eyes beneath a mane of blond hair, and her fur was a caramel brown. She had a strong upper body, arms boasting corded muscle. Her legs, almost completely bare except for the bikini-bottom she wore, were no less defined. The build of a runner... or a kick-boxer.

As if to emphasize his analysis, her leg snapped forward, striking his hip. His teeth clenched as he struggled to contain a howl of agony. His already injured leg thrummed with pain, making his next response sluggish when in the next second she spun her pole around to jab him in the solar plexus and knock him backward. She was fast!

Stumbling against the wall, he grit his teeth through the pain in his leg as he brought up his other, lashing out with a sidelong kick as she rushed him again. She skidded as his hoof connected with her shoulder, knocking her off balance - not to mention eliciting a pained yelp from her -being kicked by a hooved furson could be very painful. Seizing the precious second he'd gained, he sprang forward, arms up and knee outstretched

Bantam Beaver spun to meet the soaring caribou, putting up her staff in time to block his upraised arms, but his knee slammed into her chest all the same, a rush of air escaping her mouth as she fell back another few inches. Warp's arms snapped forward, seizing her Bantam Pole and trying to wrench it from her grasp, but she stubbornly held on even as her feet skidded over the floor. The wrestled for control of the weapon, baring teeth and glaring into each others eyes as they slammed into walls and shelves. Bantam Beaver gained the upper hand when a sharp turn put weight on Warp's bad leg, throwing him off balance. She twisted, and hurled him over her shoulder.

Warp managed to correct himself, landing on both hooves and once more holding onto his composure through the pain in his leg. He lunged, and teleported at the last second. He appeared behind Bantam Beaver, once more throwing all of his weight into his outstretched knee, certain he had her...

To his utter disbelief, she pivoted away from him, arching herself out of the path of his knee. His shock made him sluggish, and he reeled as Bantam Beaver spun around and struck him in back with her pole. His momentum carried him across the room, crashing into a wall before sliding to the floor, barely clinging to consciousness as he rolled onto his back. He lay there stunned for a moment, then huffed as Bantam Beaver fell upon him, her knee slamming hard into his stomach as she held her staff against his neck, her other leg planted on the floor beside them as she breathed heavily, glaring into his eyes.

"You lose, bucko," she said firmly. "I noticed you're favouring a leg. Shame this really wasn't a fair fight because of that gimp. I've heard you're pretty good."

Warp's eyes opened, and then rolled to the side. Suddenly his face stretched in a wide smile, and he looked up at her again. "If you ever want a rematch, leave me a message," he said. "For now I'll give this one to you, and be on my way."

"What're you on ab-" her words trailed off as a bluish light, as bright as the flash of a camera held too close to her face, suddenly filled her eyes.

Then, she dropped. Blinded, she instinctively released her Bantam pole, sending clattering across the floor as she landed on her hands and knees. She blinked her eyes until the spots faded from her eyes and took in her surroundings. She ready for him to attack again, but the blow never came.

She looked about the room, and then she saw it. In the fight, one of the blinds had been pulled loose, revealing the outside. From the floor, she could see a building. The same building where she had caught the Warp.

"Son of a-!" She cursed as she came to understand.

She charged the door, nearly cracking the built-in window as she threw it open and startled the night shift construction workers outside. She didn't wait for them to ask if she was alright before she shot into the air, carrying her into the sky. She held onto the pole with one hand, taking the other and putting a finger to her earpiece which thankfully had stayed in her ear during the fight, and contacted the field office.

"Bantam Beaver here. I need an address! James Clarke, manager of McKenzie accounting, pronto!"

~~~~~

James savoured the burning of the vodka as he downed more than half of his drink in a single swig. He hadn't put down the phone after receiving the call from Johnny, caressing it in his fingers and swirling his drink as he considered the implications of what his friend had passed onto him. To find out that there was a snitch in the office, and that it was someone so close to him personally... it was simultaneously gratifying. But also disappointing.

"Well, was good while it lasted I guess," he remarked off-handedly, lifting the glass to his lips again.

Blue light flashed beside him. Appearing seemingly from nowhere, the Ghost of Toronto stood in front of him. He screamed and stumbled, his glass falling to crash on the floor and the phone clattering with it, becoming soaked in mixed vodka when the glass shattered. He regained his balance quickly, lifting his hands as if to defend himself.

"Mr. Clarke," the white clad caribou stated. His voice was deep and stern, but his posture was not hostile. His hands were lowered, and his legs spaced evenly apart. But his gray eyes behind his mask were still intimidating to look into, resembling the chalky eyes of a corpse long dead. Faded and lifeless.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Clarke demanded, understandably alarmed by the intrusion. Everyone in Toronto knew this vigilante known as the Ghost. Even more so since there was a warrant out for his arrest, announced on the news a week ago.

"I have reason to believe your life may be in danger," the Ghost told him.

Clarke crossed his arms. "And who is threatening me?"

"It's quite possible you are being targeted by the Mafia," Warp began to explain. "At the hour of sixteen-oh-seven, you were contacted by a mob enforcer named Johnny. He warned you that there was a bank heist coming - the Dalton bank, to be exact, in which he expressed that he suspected there was a snitch in your company. You then announced to your employees that you were closing the office - I presume because you knew the Yakuza would come looking for the records of the Mafia's assets, so that they could start taking over."

Clarke was gaping at him before he had even finished speaking, struck dumb by Warp's rapid explanation. He stammered for a moment, lifting a hand and pointing an accusing finger at him. "How-?" He choked out. "How could you know all that?!"

" I know," Warp stated evasively. "But the Yakuza failed and the Mafia were intercepted. Myself and a second superhero intervened. They will likely believe you sent us since you were one of if not the only person they told of the attack. It's possible they might believe you are their snitch."

Clarke was fumbling with his words, trying to formulate a response. The sudden appearance of Warp and his barrage had certainly muddled the man. But the incoherent spouts of denial and the mention of other names that came out of his mouth... Started to make Warp feel suspicious, and he tried to listen more attentively to his employer - to Daniel Tonraq's employer.

"They aren't-! I mean, I'm not-! Johnny, he said that they-! Blake just-!" He sputtered. "I don't know what you're talking about!" He finally managed to say in a coherent manner.

"You already know you aren't the snitch?" Warp returned.

"I have no ties to the Italian Mafia, none!" He protested. "I'm a legitimate businessman! A manager for an accounting firm, nothing else!"

That was it. "I never said it was the _Italian_Mafia," he pointed out. Usually, when pursuing leads on the Mafia, he left out which branch it was. 'Mafia' was a term used to describe criminal organizations from many countries - Russia, Germany, Italy, Sicily, Mexico, and more. This time he'd only left it out of habit, but Clarke had still slipped.

As Clarke gaped, trying to formulate another response to save himself, Warp teleported. He appeared behind the man and then knelt down to pick up the alcohol soaked phone on the floor. Clarke spun around, and made a grab for the phone when he saw it. Warp brought up his hand and roughly shoved Clarke back, sending him stumbling across the room to crash into the opposite wall. Warp switched on the phone, checking recent calls.

A number marked "Johnny" sat at the very top, and it had only been received a moment ago. Warp dropped on the phone and looked squarely at Clarke, his scowl made all the more intimidating by his chalky eyes. Fake though they were, the coloured contact lenses he wore did help make him a more intimidating sight. Especially when he was angry, looking more like a ghost - an _angry_ghost - than his unintended street nickname had ever done.

"You aren't the snitch," he said. "But you know who is. They just told you, didn't they?"

Warp had him dead to rights and Clarke knew it. Warp saw all the signs as Clarke's shoulders slumped in defeat. A show of capitulation, followed by an expression to show usually consisting of anger, someone who knew their life was over and would fight or flee. Or guilt, someone who never liked what they did, but usually had a reason. Sometimes, they would cry in shame there at his hooves.

What he saw when Clarke raised his head though, he had not expected. He had to take a second look to make sure he was not misreading what he was seeing. Complete dispassion was all he saw on the lynx's face. No anger. No remorse. Nothing...

"Fine," he said. Gone was the cordial, Canadian businessman Warp knew under his civilian identity as Daniel Tonraq. In its place, a sour man who seemed to care little about the matter at hand. "Yes, Johnny called me. They found out who the snitch was, who told the Yakuza about the bank. Turns out it was my little cock sleeve intern, Blake. He's been feeding them information for a while now, apparently."

"How could your intern have access to such information?" Warp demanded.

"He does my paperwork, and probably overhears my conversations while he's under my desk," the lynx replied with a shrug. "Johnny is an old friend of mine from high school. When he got in with the mob, he asked me to be his personal accountant. I've been doing that since before I made it to manager at McKenzie and it wasn't something I could just pass along to the next guy, so I've kept it up. The little shit probably made a deal with the Yakuza - I don't know what they could offer him he couldn't get if he did the smart thing and just fell in with the Italians like I did. Won't matter much longer anyway."

Warp took a threatening step toward Clarke. "You're willing to let them kill a young man like that?" He demanded. "You won't even warn him?"

"I'll get another intern," Clarke replied in disgust. "Maybe I'll get a lady next time instead of a buck caribou brat who choked the first time he-"

Had there been anyone else in the room, the sound of Warp's fist striking Clarke across the face would have made their eyes blink. For Clarke, stars exploded across his vision, and he half-spun back into the wall behind him. He didn't even register what had happened until he felt like his face had caught fire. He tasted blood, and as he stumbled to the floor he saw a chunk of white in the blood that dripped out of his mouth that could only have been a tooth.

Recovering from the unexpected strike, he lifted his head and leered at Warp. "You-!" He did not get more than a single word, before the caribou's hand seized him by his scalp hair and hauled him to his feet. The lynx yowled in pain, grabbing at Warp's hand to try to pry him loose.

"Where is he?" He demanded. "Where does your intern live?"

"How a heh shud I know?!" He demanded, his words slurred by the broken tooth and blood pooling in his mouth. "Ee's been workin' fo me fo o'er a year!"

"Then you better remember quickly!" Warp barked at him, his fingers clenching. Several strands of hair were pulled loose as his grip tightened and he lifted Clarke higher.

Behind the veil of rage that had settled over him, Warp knew he was going too far. But he didn't care that he was hurting Clarke. This was a man he knew - not as the Warp, but as Daniel Tonraq. A man who he now understood had been nothing but a farce - the cordial, kind businessman, a mask. Now he stood, concealed behind his own mask, seeing the man who had hired him for what he was. He was just another thug, digging himself deep into the infrastructure of the city he called home. Just another leech, feeding off the less fortunate of society to fuel his own lifestyle. He might not have been a mobster - not Triad, not Yakuza, not even really a member of the Mafia. But he was no better than they were...

"Wait!" Clarke screamed, still uselessly clawing at Warp's reinforced glove. "I thik it was... yesh! Bayview! Shandy Bruchse Pak!"

"Sandy Bruce Park?" Warp echoed. "Bayview and Moore Avenue, with that music school for children?"

"Dat one! Yesh! Heh's righ' up the sree!"

Warp let go, letting the lynx drop to the floor. He watched the man curling into a fetal position, one hand holding his mouth, the other the top of his head. Warp's fist clenched, ready to strike the pathetic man again, but he held himself back. Then, his gaze snapped up when he heard the front door being kicked inward. Without another word, he vanished from the room.

Bantam Beaver, drawn by the sound of the moaning James Clarke, rounded the corner in the hallway and dashed into the room. She found the lynx lying on the floor, seeing the blood, and dropped to one knee to check him. "What happened?" She asked. "Are you alright?"

"He broke my toof!" The lynx cried, still clutching his burning cheek and still slurred by the pain in his face.

Bantam Beaver put a finger to her earpiece and made a quick call for an ambulance to come to Clarke's residence. Then, when she lowered her finger, she looked at him again. "Help is on the way," she said. "Is he still here, in the house?"

"No," Clarke replied, the pain starting to lessen enough that he opened his eyes and saw the heroine kneeling over him. "Who... who're you?"

"Bantam Beaver. I'm with the Bureau of Superheroes," she explained. "Do you know where the Warp is going? Did he say anything?"

Clarke was silent for a moment, as if gauging her question. He had to fight back a smile as a thought occurred to him. Though that wasn't hard, as any movement of his mouth sent a bolt of pain through his head.

"Heh's goig aft my intern, Blake Logan," he replied. "I thik heh's gonna ki'nap him."

Warp hoped he wasn't too late. He'd already been delayed by his discussion with Clarke, enough that he was pushing his teleportation to the absolute limit as he crossed the city. Bayview was one of the longest avenues in the city but had few landmarks. Sandy Bruce Park was one he was familiar with, sitting behind a music school and rug store along Moore Avenue where the two streets crossed. The challenge, however, was finding which apartment Blake lived in.

When he appeared on the street, he startled several pedestrians. He ignored them, looking up and down the street's east side where there stood six buildings. Any of the six buildings he looked at could have been the one. All of the apartments were red brick, varying from three to eight stories tall. Apartments in Toronto were expensive, and Warp knew Blake did not make very much money compared to the rest of the accounting firm. He tried to gauge which one of the buildings looked the least expensive, but each one was well-kept and cared for.

The tallest one, he ruled out. Years ago, Daniel Tonraq had visited that complex looking for a place to rent and even the bachelor suites had been grossly expensive, and far from his workplace. Even with a bus stop out front, it had not been ideal, so he focused his attention on the remaining five. He teleported to the first, pulling open the front door and looking at the plaque on the wall that held the names of the residents.

"Blake Logan... Blake Logan..."

Nothing. He stormed out, and went to the next. By the third apartment, he finally found it. Blake Logan, with his room number included. Warp teleported through the glass door barring him access to the main building, and ran for the stairs. He tried to run up the stairs, only for his injured leg to buckle under him by the first landing, sending him careening into the wall. Shaking off the daze, he hurried up the next set, fighting through the pain that lanced up his leg with every step.

He burst through the door on the next floor, and ran down the hall to Blake's room. The door looked intact - he took that as a good sign, and raised his fist to pound on the door, but stopped himself. If Blake was ratting out the Mafia, he likely was already on edge. Having someone beating down his door would certainly spook him. Reining himself in and taking a steadying breath, Warp knocked gently, and then moved out of sight of the door's peephole.

A moment later, the door opened a crack. Through it, Warp could see someone looking through, and he leaned out into view. Blake did not get the chance to say anything before Warp vanished in a flash of light, reappearing behind him. "Mr. Logan," he said.

"Ah!" The young man yelped, jumping into the door and causing it to slam shut. "H-How did you-?! You can't just come in here!"

Blake was a caribou like Warp, but six years younger than himself. His eyes were bright blue, standing out against his tawny exterior. He was thin, undoubtedly underweight - something Daniel was shocked he had never noticed before. Seeing him now, shirtless, his bony figure was no longer concealed beneath the multiple layers of clothes he wore at work for business purposes.

"Listen to me," Warp began. "You're in danger. The mafia are coming."

"The-" Blake started to say, before choking on his words. Colour drained from his face, his eyes growing wide as he swallowed hard. "They... they know?"

"Yes," he replied. "You can explain later, but for now I have to get you out of here."

"Where are you taking me?" Blake asked.

"Somewhere they can't find you," replied Warp. "I know you probably don't have any reason to trust me, but I swear to you, I'm here to help."

"I know you are," replied Blake, giving an assuring nod.

"You... you do?" Warp asked, taken aback.

"You're the Ghost of Toronto," began Blake. "A lot of people are talking about you. You took down the Triad, and you've been saving lives all over the city. You were seen fighting the Mafia earlier, so I know _they_didn't send you."

A thump from the hallway brought both of them back to alertness, their gazes shifting to the door. "No... but they have sent someone," replied Warp, reaching out to grasp Blake's shoulder gently, putting a finger to his lips before carefully leading him away from the door.

He eased Blake around the corner as quietly as possible, making sure he was out of the path of the door before moving deeper into the apartment. They heard someone testing the door handle, and attempting to shoulder it open when the chain latch caught. Warp turned promptly to Blake as he heard the chain rattle.

"Do you have a balcony?" He asked in a whisper.

"N-No," he replied.

"We'll have to leave another way then," he said, and crouched to lower himself in front of the younger caribou. "If you trust me, put your arm over my shoulders."

"Uh... okay," replied Blake, nervously. The chain latch rattled again as once more the intruders attempted to open the door. Then came a sound like a sharp hiss of escaping air, and metal clattering to the floor.

"They shot the latch," Warp whispered. "Blake, it's now or never!"

Finally the younger caribou did as he was told, practically throwing himself onto the older caribou and hugging him as if his life depended on it. It did, and Warp wasted no time commanding a teleportation. By the time the two men in suits appeared around the corner into the living room, compact, silenced pistols held at the ready, their target was gone without a trace from the small apartment.

Teleporting two people was always more taxing for Warp than simply teleporting himself. Though he had become more accustomed to it during Whiptail's time as his partner, his already exhausted body did not enjoy the excess energy. When they appeared again, he was gasping for breath. Blake released him only when Warp told him it was safe to do so, and the older caribou moved over to a chair and sat down. He lay his arms over his knees as he took a moment to collect himself.

"Are you okay?" Blake asked, concerned.

"Yes," he replied, breathlessly. He took another moment to refill his lungs, and spoke evenly. "Teleportation is more taxing than you might expect. At least, my form of it is. I don't know what it's like for others who have power like it."

Blake nodded in understanding, and then shivered as he registered the chill of the room. He put his arms around himself, doubtless wishing he'd kept his shirt one when he had gone home that day, or at least had the time to put one back on before Warp had spirited him away to safety. He turned to look about the room, studying the featureless interior of the Bunker. His gaze lingered on the exit briefly, a look of relief passing over his face before he glanced at the desk where the police radio was abuzz with chatter.

"What is this place?" He asked.

"My Bunker," replied Warp. "Call it my personal hideout. It's where I rest between patrols, and evade pursuit from the authorities and B.O.S who have orders to capture me."

Blake's ears flicked up at that, and he turned to look at Warp. "Wait, you're unregistered?" He asked. "But why?"

"Do you think someone bound to the system could bring down a criminal organization that _exploits_the system?" Warp countered.

"Well... I don't know. Maybe?" Blake asked.

Warp shook his head. "No... if I had to work within the boundaries of the law as heroes like Mighty Moose do, I could never have brought down the Triad. Though, it turns out that I may have moved too quickly." He added somberly. He gave a shake of his head before looking at Blake again. "But enough about that. Blake, from what I have gathered, you've been feeding intelligence on the Mafia's logistical affairs with the Yakuza. Is that correct?"

"Yes," replied Blake, nodding. He found a chair to sit in, and accepted Warp's cape when the pale caribou offered it for him to cover up with. Wrapping the red cape around himself, he looked at the vigilante once more. "How did you find out?"

"Let's just say your boss should protect his email a little better," replied Warp. "I learned about the attack on the Dalton Bank. At first, after I and Bantam Beaver showed up there at about the same time, I thought the mob would mistake Mr. Clarke as responsible for the information leak, but when I went to his house to confront him I learned they were targeting you."

Blake nodded again, his expression contorting as though he had swallowed something sour. "Yeah... I've been feeding info to the Yakuza. I knew James was in cahoots with one of the Mafia's top enforcers. I thought maybe they could cause enough havoc to make James writhe for a bit, especially if the Mafia were ever taken down. It was gratifying watching him sweat when he saw that email, not even aware that I was seeing it too."

"So you told the Yakuza about Dalton Bank?" Warp asked, and Blake nodded for the third time. "What was in it for you? Did they offer you money for the information?"

This time, Blake shook his head. "They did... but money wasn't what I_wanted_."

"What did you want, then?" Warp asked, leaning forward. "The Yakuza wouldn't enlist you - they don't hire anyone outside of Japanese ethnicity, except as informants."

"I wanted James gone," he replied, his expression darkening further. "I wanted that fucker to suffer as he's been making me suffer for the last year."

"What do you mean?" Warp asked. He didn't want to give any hint that he knew already why Blake resented his employer and benefactor for his internship. The boy was clearly already hurting, and pressing the issue would likely cause Blake to shut down and withhold information. He had to let him speak at his own pace.

But to his dismay, Blake looked at him with incredulity. "You've been in my boss's office," he said. "I'm sure you saw what was tucked under his desk."

Warp frowned, but nodded. "I didn't want to press too hard."

"It's fine," Blake replied. "I've grown so numb to this wretched existence I can't even feel ashamed of it anymore. Yeah, I was having sexual relations with my boss - if you could even call it relations."

"And that made you contact the Yakuza?" Warp asked. "What'd they offer you?"

"A way out," he replied, his voice breaking even as he spoke. "At the very least, I'd be moved to an ordinary job and not stuck being that bastard's personal slut." Blake broke down sobbing then, lifting his legs to his chest and clutching them tightly. Warp allowed him a few minutes to let the poor, abused boy release his pent up frustrations.

"Did you ever try reaching out to anyone?" Warp asked, trying to sound sympathetic. In truth, he wished he had known what James was really doing. If he had found out before today, he'd have done something to stop it. Maybe 'accidentally' walk in on James while Blake was servicing him, to call him out on it. Maybe approach Blake after hours, and offer to help him. He could have done _something,_if he had only known...

Blake sobbed again. "I turned to Connie, our assistant manager," he said. "She didn't believe me... didn't even look into it. I felt too ashamed to ask any of the other staff for help. What could any of them do? I tried talking to my dad but he never answers the phone, and with my hours cut I couldn't afford to go see him. I could barely even feed myself."

_'That explains why he's so thin,'_thought Warp, saddened.

Blake began to sob again. James had turned this hopeful young man into a shell of his true self. All of his potential, wasted by an abusive employer. Behind the mask, Daniel was hurting inside, his heart grieving for Blake and never being able to help him. For all the people he'd saved, there had been another one under his very nose needing his help as much as any of them. But he'd never seen the signs...

"It's time we got you some proper help," stated Warp, rising from his chair.

Blake sniffed, lifting his head to look up at Warp. "Where?"

"The police, for starters," he replied. "Your life was threatened tonight. They'll need to know. Then, they can help you find someone who can help you through this." He offered Blake a hand.

"But how?" Blake asked. "No one will help me unless James is caught in the act."

"Someone will," Warp promised. "Let's get the case started, and then the rest will work itself out."

After a moment of coaxing, Blake eventually took Warp's hand, and they left the bunker in another flash. Following several teleportations, they reappeared by a busy roadside. the headlights of cars illuminating them as they passed the two. Blake took a moment to take in his surroundings until his gaze settled on the large building behind them.

"Hey, I know that place," he said. "That's the Yonge Sheppard Center. I shop here sometimes. We're just ten blocks from my house."

Warp nodded. "I thought you would prefer being in an area I hoped was familiar," he said, breathing heavily.

"Are you going to be okay? You said teleporting tires you, right?"

"I'll recover," Warp lied, not wanting to let Blake know he was dangerously close to his limit. Throughout that day, he had battled an injured leg, a B.O.S super, multiple gangsters, and probably set a new record for the number of teleportations in a single day. He wasn't even sure he could make it home now if he were to try. But he had to stay strong for Blake's sake. If he showed any weakness now, the boy could lose what little resolve he had.

Standing tall and fighting the throbbing pain in his leg, Warp said, "there's a police station up the street. I'll escort you there, and they'll get things started for you."

"What exactly will we be doing?" Blake asked, nervous as he and Warp walked up the street.

"For starters, you'll need their protection from the Mafia. They'll still be looking for you," explained Warp.

It occurred to Warp then that he was doing something rather unusual for him - at least for him behind the mask. Ever since he had first donned the mask, his only goal had been to bring down the criminal underworld in Toronto. Now here he was, helping a young abused man in pursuing justice against his employer. Before that night, Warp had certainly helped multiple people, usually protecting those caught in the crossfire of gang violence or targets of the elements he thought to bring down. But domestic or workplace issues like this, he'd never concerned himself with.

Was it because he knew Blake personally? Because under that mask, completely unknown to Blake, was someone he knew from work? Maybe he and Blake weren't friends but they certainly weren't strangers. Could Warp's actions be the result of workplace ties? Or, was it possible he was turning into less of a crusader seeking to root out evil, and more of a hero?

As he pondered these thoughts, they reached the police station. Warp's leg had begun to ache again from the walk - albeit brief as it was. But he managed to hide his gimp, knowing that if he showed weakness in front of Blake, the younger caribou might lose what little resolve he had mustered.

"Here we are," said Warp as they reached the main doors of the police station. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be, I guess," replied Blake. With a deep, steadying breath, he stepped forward, approaching the double doors. They slid open as he approached, and he stopped just outside. He took one more look back at Warp, who gave him one final nod of encouragement. He stepped through the doors, and disappeared from sight.

Warp let out a sigh, and started looking for somewhere to rest. He knew there were a few people on the street looking his way - perhaps fewer than there usually were even at this time of night. With the city in crisis, few honest folk braved the streets at night.

There was a bench near the main entrance of the station, and he started making his way over to it. But as he neared it, a shadow fell over him. He looked up, and in the nick of time he saw a figure falling toward him out of the air. He put up his arms, crossing them above his head and let his bracers take the impact of the staff when it came down.

"Finally found you," said Bantam Beaver before she kicked Warp in the chest, hurling both of them back. She flipped around to land on her feet while Warp staggered back two steps before regaining his balance.

"You again?" Warp demanded, irritably. "How did-"

He didn't get to finish before something slammed hard into his chest. Air rushed through up through his throat and out his mouth as Bantam Beaver's pole astoundingly grew to double its length, one end of it striking him square and throwing him onto his back. Then, she pounced, landing atop the caribou and clutching him just as he attempted to teleport, inadvertently bringing her with him.

They reappeared near the sidewalk, and tumbled as they both fought for control. Warp managed to kick Bantam Beaver off him, jump to his feet and put up his guard just as she struck again. Her attacks were swift and agressive, pressuring him and forcing him to keep his guard up. He wanted to teleport away, but she was leaving him no precious seconds to concentrate.

She was not toying around this time, and Warp did not have the advantage. His leg's aching made maneuvering difficult, his fatigue made his reactions sluggish. Each time he tried to strike back, she easily evaded his fist. He cursed himself for not reacquiring his toolbelt when he had escaped her the first time.

She battered him with her staff; his arm guards took every blow with a resounding thunk of wood hitting metal. Seeing an opening as he blocked a high strike, he snapped forward and drove his fist into her gut, putting all of the force he could muster into the hit; she grunted and let out a cough from the punch. He leapt at her, aiming with his knee to hit her in the chest. She fell back before he made contact, dropping herself into a bridge position and letting him soar over her. He landed in a roll, and winced as he tried to stand up again.

That wince had cost him. Bantam Beaver charged and took his legs out from under him with a single sweep of her pole. The blow to his hurt leg brought a yelp to his lips as they were swept aside and he landed hard on his front, dazed. She landed on him again, this time her pole pressed against the back of his neck as she held him pinned.

"You aren't going anywhere this time," she said. With his head turned to the side he could just barely see her glaring down at him out of the corner of one eye. Why was she staring at him like that? That was not the gaze of someone on a mission, but of someone with a purpose.

"How... how did you find me?" Warp asked.

"I've had a trace following Blake Logan's phone, after his boss told me you were going to kidnap him," replied Bantam Beaver.

"I did not kidnap him!" Warp retorted. "He's in the police station, over there!" He tried to point with his nose.

Bantam Beaver pushed his head back down again. "You also assaulted an innocent, unarmed man tonight. And don't pretend you didn't - I _saw_the aftermath firsthand. Knocked his tooth out and left him bleeding from his mouth!"

Warp tried to formulate a response, but he did not have one. Bantam Beaver was right. He had struck an unarmed man, who even though was a backer of the Mafia, he was still considered a civilian in the eyes of the law. Just once, Warp had crossed the line that night, and his consequences had caught up with him.

Bantam Beaver had him. Pressed onto him as she was, if he tried to teleport she would be carried away with him. He couldn't escape her if he couldn't get her off him first, but she was firmly planted, and looked ready to knock him senseless the moment he showed any resistance.

"Wait!"

The heroes turned their heads in the direction of the voice. Warp saw Blake and a police officer, sidearm in hand, running over to them. "Don't hurt him!" Blake pleaded, looking directly at Bantam Beaver.

"Mr. Logan?" Bantam Beaver asked.

"Yes, I'm him," replied Blake, stopping himself short of running into the heroine. His feet were planted and his hands were flexing, ready to push her off but holding himself in check. "Let him go! He helped me!"

"Your employer said he kidnapped you," said Bantam Beaver.

"He what?" Blake asked, an expression of disgust on his face. "James is a liar! This guy saved me from two of his Mafia pals tonight!"

Bantam Beaver looked down at Warp, considering Blake's words. "He rescued you?" She asked.

"Yes, he did!" Blake retorted. He turned to the officer pleadingly, hoping he might assist him somehow. But the policeman was as at a loss as Bantam Beaver. He had his firearm trained in Warp's direction but his finger was off the trigger, and he was looking sideways at Blake.

"Please, let him go!" Blake pleaded again. "Warp isn't the bad guy, James is! He's the Mafia's lackey! I can prove it!"

"Mr. Logan, this man is a vigilante, and a fugitive from justice," Bantam Beaver stated, keeping her voice both authoritative and professional. "He's an unregistered Superhero, and he has committed assault on an unarmed civilian tonight. Even if what you say is true, it doesn't change that he's a wanted man."

"Oh come on, that's bullshit! He's every bit the hero you are!" Blake retorted.

Bantam Beaver lifted her head, scowling at Blake. She opened her mouth to speak, but then Warp shifted, turning sharply and causing her to tumble off him. The officer aimed his weapon, shouting for him not to move. He barely spoke the first word before Warp vanished in a blink of light, the officer recoiling from the flash. He aimed his firearm skyward and took his finger from the trigger to avoid an accidental discharge, using his other hand to rub his eyes.

"Damn it!" Bantam Beaver cursed, turning on Blake and glowering at him. "Seriously, kid? I've been chasing him for over an hour! You know how hard it is to track down a teleporter?"

Blake crossed his arms. "Maybe you should rethink your priorities, miss," he replied.

She groaned, tossing her head as she rolled her eyes, fuming. After taking a moment to collect herself, she fixed her gaze on Blake again, laying her Bantam Pole across her shoulders as she regarded him. "You say the guilty party is your employer. Right now, he's in the hospital after your 'hero' there tried to knock his face off. Clearly, he lied about you being kidnapped but for him being in contact with the Mafia, you better have some solid proof about that."

"Get me to a computer, I'll give you all the proof you can handle, lady."

After Bantam Beaver had found James Clarke injured in his home, she'd contacted an ambulance to pick him up, and he was swiftly shipped to the hospital. Too quickly to have any time to check his email and erase his past messages, which Blake accessed via a laptop lent to him by one of the police officers in the station. They found the email that had led Warp to the Dalton Bank incident, telling James Clarke about the imminent attack by the Yakuza - under the direction of the Kameyama Family.

Bantam Beaver had never heard of the Kameyama family, but after a quick call to her husband, she learned enough to know they were real. He, Shogun Hare confirmed that they were indeed a well-known branch of the Yakuza - at least by reputation. He had never actually encountered the family himself but throughout his career he had heard many whispers about them. They were highly secretive and wanted internationally - Interpol had been after them for over twenty years, but they had never been able to find where they had settled after fleeing Japan.

_'What're the odds they wound up here in Canada?'_Bantam Beaver thought after getting off the phone.

The police raided Clarke's house that night after receiving a search warrant. They located Clarke's phone, which he had left behind, and found the contact information for Johnny. Their next stop after was the hospital. No sooner was James Clarke released from the emergency room, he was loaded into a police cruiser and taken in for questioning, for failure under the laws of duty to rescue and consorting with known criminals. Bantam Beaver was present at the arrest in case things got out of hand, and so was Warp.

She first became aware of him when she heard the beat of hooves coming from around the van she stood near. She noticed immediately that he had his belt back - doubtless he'd retrieved it from the trailer where they had first fought. She flourished her pole, and lay it across both her hands, preparing herself, but he put up a hand.

"I don't want to fight," he said.

"Then what're you doing here?" She demanded.

"Blake," he replied, meeting her gaze. "Is he going to be okay?"

Slowly, Bantam Beaver lowered her pole, keeping her eyes locked to his. She eventually nodded. "Yeah," she replied. "I found out about the rest. About what... what his boss was doing to him." She shook her head, disgusted. "It didn't take much to get a case started. Blake has all the signs of undernourishment. Bank records prove his hours have been getting cut unlawfully. The sexual abuse case is a little harder to pin down, since it was technically consensual, but even if they don't find enough to prove Blake was pressured into it the rest is still going to be a stain on Clarke's record."

"Mr. Clarke won't be returning to McKenzie, I hope?"

"The business owner has been contacted and informed of Mr. Clarke's activities," Bantam Beaver answered. "The rest is up to him, but if there's any justice in the world Clarke will be fired and slapped with several infractions."

A silence hung over the two for a moment as they watched the police cruiser transporting James leave the parking lot. It was eventually Bantam Beaver who broke the silence. "You helped out that kid, even though you could've easily just looked away. I'll remember that, but it changes nothing, you know," she said, turning to look at him again. "I'll still have to bring you in if I find you again."

He turned to look at her, gauging her as though he expected her to attack him at that very moment. But she only smirked. "Next time, I hope I'll be fighting more than a one-legged buck. I want it to be a fair fight."

Warp could not hold back his own smile at her words. "I'll try to heal quickly," he promised. "But like I told your boss, you'll have to catch me first."

"I already did that twice tonight," she said, pointing her staff at him. "So I_tell_you, 'just watch me'."

Warp could not help but chuckle. "Touché."

With his last word, Warp vanished in another flash of light, leaving Bantam Beaver alone in the parking lot. She let out a huff, and considered what else she could do that night. Despite all that had happened the night was still young. Her patrol was far from over.

With a few moments of thought she decided to return first to the field office. There was one more loose end she wanted to tie before she moved on. 'I hope they found someone to look at that gizmo for me,' she thought as she gripped her Bantam Pole and thrust it skyward, its power carrying her into the air.

Ironsides, concealed behind the faceplate of her suit's helmet, heard the door to her makeshift laboratory opening through the receptors on her helm. She looked up from the workbench where the dark disk rested awaiting her analysis. She studied the figure in scant red clothing stepping into the office, her eyes settling on the pole draped over her shoulders as she pushed through the door.

"You're Bantam Beaver," she said, her voice modulated by her helmet to make it indiscernible. "Glad you could make it."

"And you must be Ironsides," the newcomer replied, taking a hand from her staff and offering it to the armoured heroine. "Nice to finally meet you, eh."

Ironsides shook her hand without hesitation. The suit's hand utterly dwarfed Bantam Beaver's own, but she made sure to minimize the pressure as she shook hands with the Canadian heroine. "Likewise. Heard a lot about you," she replied.

"I deny everything. Especially the parts that say I lost."

Behind the faceplate, Ironsides blinked. Of course Bantam Beaver couldn't see it, but the lack of a reaction seemed to be enough. She flashed a sheepish smile and chuckled lightly. "Just a joke," she said. "I never lose."

"Right," Ironsides replied as she withdrew her hand, the skepticism not apparent in her voice when filtered through the speaker on her mask. "Am I to understand you found this at the bank hit by the Yakuza earlier?"

"Yep. Stuck right to the vault door - which was gone," she answered, laying her pole across her shoulders again. "Find out anything?"

"I've only just begun to study it," Ironsides answered, turning to face the device again. "Based on your account, it likely is involved with the disappearance of the vault door. Now we just need to know how it did it." Inside her helmet, she keyed in a recording app to take notes of her examination.

"Log: Unknown device, used in robbery of mob bank. First entry," she said, her external speaker still on.

"You're recording?"

Ironsides paused the recording. "Quiet please," she said before turning it back on. "Device is composed of a carbon fibre and glass frame. Through the glass, sophisticated circuitry can be seen within the device. The circuitry, while professionally laid out, appears to be using fairly low end materials in its composition, likely built from spare parts or deconstructed tech devices before being repurposed."

She ran her hand over the domed plate, letting the scanner run its diagnostic of the item. "Scans detect... an unknown technology within the device that is not part of the construction." She picked up the device with her free hand, turning it over while still scanning it. "There appears to be a small access point to the contents of the device, but according to scans, it is not intended to reach the-"

She paused as the access point she had just been describing, suddenly opened. It seemed to have responded to her hand passing over it, and she instinctively froze. Motion activated? Or had she triggered some sort of defense mechanism? She waited a few seconds, and was about to continue making her report to update with the sudden change.

That's when the warning lights started flashing. She snapped to attention, reading the HUD. It showed her gauntlet, the one held over the access point. The warning indicated the structure was being compromised. Her ears were filled with a sound like metal on a grinder that sounded far away. But it was Bantam Beaver's shocked "Whoa!" that made her look down.

Her gauntlet was smoking, and there were holes appearing across the plating. She cursed, dropping the plated dome back on the table and backing away. She keyed in an eject command, intended to fire the gauntlet off her arm and remove whatever was trying to eat through it.

It didn't come off. The servos whirred and then locked, and sparks erupted from the seams of the glove. Now, Ironsides was on the verge of panic as she saw more of her glove being eaten away by something she couldn't see. She tried to fling the gauntlet off, but it stuck fast.

Bantam Beaver dropped her pole and leapt over, seizing Ironsides' arm. She gripped the gauntlet, pushing her fingers under the articulating plates that had opened before the servos had locked up, and then pulled. She grit her teeth with the effort, but with a mighty heave the gauntlet came free, more sparks flying as the glove was ripped free of its mounts, several wires pulled with it as it flew across the room, clattering on the floor.

Then, Bantam Beaver turned to Ironsides. "You okay?" She asked, concerned and looking down at her hand - or at least where it should be. "Oh my god, your arm!" She screamed, horrified.

"It's okay!" she assured the heroine. To reassure her, she deactivated the rest of the suit's right arm, popping open the armour to reveal her actual right arm. She wiggled her fingers for Bantam Beaver to see. "My arm's fine. But I'm gonna have to replace a chunk of my suit."

Bantam Beaver let out a sigh of relief, a hand falling onto her chest. "Jesus," she said, before turning her gaze back to the table. "Look at that!" She exclaimed, pointing.

Ironsides lowered her hand, looking once at Bantam Beaver and then to the table where she was pointing. Behind her faceplate, her jaw fell open and her eyes went wide. Half of the section of the workbench which she had been using was missing. Before her eyes more of it seemed to be dissolving, like a cube of sugar being lowered slowly into a cup of water. Yet, the body of the bench remained untouched.

A clatter on the floor brought the attention of the two heroes down to the remains of Ironside's glove. It had been reduced to a single metal plate and a mess of wires and fibres, ringed by what seemed to be a deep gray dust on the ceramic floor. A similar substance formed around the outside and inside of the workbench as its top continued to dissolve away, the sound of a distant grinder still filling the ears of the two heroines. As the last of the table's top seemed to vanish into thin air, the grinding sound finally stopped.

The two heroines stood in silence for a moment. Bantam Beaver shook her head briskly, blinking as if trying to determine what she had seen was real. "What... the hell just happened?" She demanded.

"I'm going to need to take a closer look to be sure," replied Ironsides. "For that, I may need a-" she paused, barely avoiding making a truly horrible pun. "Need some help."

Ironsides turned away from the workbench - or what remained of it, and made her way across the room. At the back sat what she used to call her recharging stand where she got out of her armour and repowered it. Although her suit hadn't been battery powered for some time now, she didn't have another name for the construction, so she still called it what it used to be. She stepped the suit onto the platform at the base, and turned around to face the room as she started to shut down..

Bantam Beaver followed her over, watching curiously. "What do you need me to do?" She asked.

"I'll just need some help getting out of the suit. I'm not sure how much damage has been done to it or by what, so I don't want to use the automated ejection," answered Ironsides.

Wary of the possibility of more of... whatever had dissolved her suit's hand, she sat the armour down on the platform and ran a diagnostic. After a quick glimpse of the readings, she found no signs of any other damage to the suit - besides the missing hand. Even with that, she wanted to see for herself how bad the damage was. Before her suit powered down, she also sent a message to Exeter, her homebase in New Hampshire, and put in a request to send replacement parts. "Should've brought some in advance," she chided herself, too low for Bantam Beaver to hear with the microphone turned off.

Finally, the canopy popped open to reveal the pilot resting within. She blinked her eyes as the workshop's bright lights filled them, shadowed by Bantam Beaver as she came to peer into the suit. Her jaw hung slightly open, and she blinked in disbelief when she saw the pilot.

"...You're not a wolf," she said.

"Nope," Caroline Montreaux returned flatly, having heard it all before. "And I'm not a boy either. Now, I'm going to walk you through getting me out of this."

Caroline explained to Bantam Beaver how to remove the mounts to release her limbs. Carefully, Bantam Beaver followed her instructions, opening the mounts and moving the released parts aside until Caroline was able to move more freely. She then helped hoist the ring-tailed lemur out of the armour to step onto the ceramic floor. Caroline hobbled slightly as she got accustomed to standing on her legs again, taking that moment to stretch her limbs.

She noticed Bantam Beaver staring, blank-faced, down at her. She saw for the first time how big Bantam Beaver was compared to her, reaching a full foot taller than the lemur. "What?" Caroline asked.

"I just..." She started to say, reaching behind her head to rub the back of it. "You're not at all what I expected to find inside that tin can."

"Didn't you read my file?" Caroline asked, amused by the beaver's surprise.

"Who has time for that?" Bantam Beaver answered with a shrug.

Caroline rolled her eyes but was still laughing lightly. Then, she turned her attention to her suit, her face turning to concern as she eyed the mess of wires and bent metal where the hand had once been. "Can you go grab... whatever's left of my suit's hand?" She requested as she walked over to the platform, kneeling to look into the damaged limb.

"Uh... it's not going to eat through my hands is it?" Bantam Beaver asked, warily eyeing the piece on the floor.

"You've held the device before and it didn't activate. I don't think it reacts to organic matter, so no it won't bite you," Caroline answered. "But maybe hold your breath. Don't breathe in that powder - if it's what I think it is, it could damage your lungs."

Caroline scrutinized every inch of the armour's humerus section, looking for any sign of the metal being eaten away as the hand had been. She sighed with relief when she found no signs of damage. Whatever had come out of the machine had been isolated to the hand by her swift action. Bantam Beaver returned shortly with the remains of the gauntlet, passing it to Caroline who lifted it to face level to study it.

"Curious," she said. "The plating is completely intact. But the servos and the exoskeleton are all... gone."

"What's that mean?" Bantam Beaver asked.

Caroline didn't immediately answer her. She didn't _have_an answer, but she had a theory. Curious, she looked back at her suit, trying to remember what the scans had shown her before the trouble had started. She eventually walked over to the suit again, powering on the HUD and reviewing the footage and voice recording from the examination. It showed her the data that had been fed into the suit's onboard computer during the scan.

"The unknown tech inside the dome," she said. "I was right. They _are_nanomachines." She looked at the ruined gauntlet in her hand. "Metal-eating nanomachines, apparently."

"If they eat metal, why didn't they eat that plate?" Bantam Beaver asked, and then turned to look at the topless workbench. "Or the rest of that bench? That's metal."

"Not metal in general." Caroline clarified. "Iron. Steel varies depending on the precise alloy, but it's mostly iron. The table top was steel but the legs weren't, and the outer layer of my armor is titanium but I use steel alloys for some of the interior. They could be using a magnetic sensor that attracts them to the steel, or it might just be programming to search and break down iron when activated."

Thinking she was drifting into unnecessary detail, Caroline shook her head and continued, more to the point. "Either way, they break down iron, and any alloy that's mostly iron," she pointed at the floor around the bench and where the gauntlet had been, to the iron grey dust encircling both spots, "all the way down into a fine powder, before going dormant again. Or they might have a programmed limit, either amount of iron consumed or timed, to keep them from going rogue."

"They can go rogue?" Bantam Beaver asked, warily.

"Oh yes, very easily. They may be limited by programming but molecular machines are insanely dangerous," She shook her head again. "Letting them out to break into a bank vault? Someone has no_clue_what they're playing with." She gestured to the powder again. "Especially when they can do _that_to solid steel."

Bantam Beaver perked up, a grimace forming on her face. "Well... Now we know what happened to the vault door of that bank," she remarked. "But wait, why didn't they eat the door's frame, too? Or even go into the vault and eat the safety deposit boxes? Nothing was stopping them."

Caroline shook her head. "Basic commands, maybe. I'll have to study them more before I can be sure of that," she answered. "All I can say is, this is revolutionary nanotech. You said the Yakuza used this to break into that vault?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Where the hell did a crime syndicate find nanomachines?"

"The Yakuza _do_have a lot of resources," Bantam Beaver offered with a shrug. "They are the third largest of the world syndicates."

"Not even the US _Military_has resources like this," replied Caroline with another shake of her head. "Even if the Yakuza managed to buy the nanites - which would be astronomically expensive, they'd have to program them for their intended purpose and that takes NASA levels of coding." She dropped the remains of her armour's hand at the foot of the suit, and crossed the room to what was left of her workbench. She picked up the device that had carried the nanomachines, looking it over.

"All contained in a device that looks like it was made in someone's garage using spare parts and avoiding the use of metal in the construction," she said, shaking her head incredulously. "Whoever the Yakuza got to make this, if they have someone with that level of tech expertise under their employ, then a lot of people are going to be in big trouble."

"Why?" Bantam Beaver asked, her eyes narrowing. "What could they do?"

"With someone who can program nanomachines?" Caroline returned, looking over her shoulder to the heroine. "The question is, what could they_not_do?"

Warp's return to the bunker was as brief as he could make it in his exhausted state. The night was yet young, and he knew there was more he could have been doing. But he dared not try. He was tired, and weak. His body was heavy, and even the act of stripping off his uniform proved difficult. Every time he lifted one of his limbs, it felt as laborious as trying to bend a length of steel with his bare hands. He hadn't even bothered to hang up his suit, leaving it draped over his chair, and threw his mask, gloves and boots on the desk in front of it. He took his time removing his contact lenses and placing them into their storage container.

Stripped naked, he dragged himself to the shower, turning on the water. Then, he cursed when it didn't turn on. He hadn't refilled the tank. Turning the faucets back to the off position again, he dragged himself back out to the main room, picking up the clothes he had worn that evening, and pictured his apartment in his mind. He had to fight through the fog of exhaustion to form a complete picture of it before he dared summon one last teleportation.

When he reappeared in his apartment, he dropped his clothes and nearly sank to his knees. This was it, he decided. He couldn't do anymore that day. Even though his head was still white with the fur paint he used for his disguise, he wanted only his bed at that moment. His hooves dragged on the floor, his eyes barely staying open as he practically fell upon his bed.

Daniel's last thought, before sleep overtook him completely, was of Blake. The boy had been through a lot, but he would be okay... Tonight, the Warp had turned from his crusade to help someone else. Tonight, it had not just been about exposing and bringing down the Mafia or the Yakuza, it had been to save a young man who could still find himself a brighter future. He had exposed his boss for the fraud he really was. He didn't know who he'd find at that desk on Monday, nor did he care to think of it.

He allowed himself one light smile of satisfaction, saving a young man and a few others at the bank, and ridding McKenzie of one of its worst influences. More thugs were off the street thanks to his actions that night, and he had not even been at his best. _This is a rest well-earned,_he told himself with certainty. Sleep found him immediately after his eyes lidded shut.